and intel i3's are not crap... Intels outbench and outdo amd in media and gaming. amd is good for server and vm stuff but intel is the best for a/v encoding.... I can encode at 192x speed in dBpoweramp on my intel i5 3570K... it would max out at 52 on an equivalant amd quad. you would still hit 100x encoding in dbpoweramp with an i3.

I'd take a look at the GTX 650 just because it's nVidia. My latest experiences with ATi's drivers have been horrible, mainly because of the limited configuration options. nVidia cards are very versatile and have some nice features you won't get with ATi (like PhysX, CUDA and better 3D with glasses should you ever want that).

The processor would be the bottleneck when running a higher end gfx but not all games are heavily dependent on cpu. I3 processors with hyper-threading is perfectly fine for those on a budget and adding a hd7770 or gtx650 makes the rig powerhouse for the cost-to-performance ratio.

Windows 8 didn't play too nice with nVidia initially. Not sure how that is after launch. On a budget Radeons are always a better deal than a GeForce. Unfortunately $100 limits you to a 128-bit memory width, which basically puts you at the performance of a high end laptop GPU. 256-bit is what the consoles use, and based on benchmarks that's a big difference. Now if $100 is what you've got, then it's what you've got, but I'd try to find a way to get something like a 7850 instead.

As far as CPU vs GPU goes, it all depends on screen and game texture resolution. If you're on 1080p+, and running hd texture mods, then the GPU and its VRAM are going to be the bottlenecks. Conversely, if you're on a lower res screen and default game textures. then the only thing that's going to limit you is the CPU. But honestly, an i3 is pretty good for most games.

I'm building a new PC soon with an i5-3570k, 8GB DDR3 1600mhz, and a 9750 3GB VRAM, but that's only because I want to run Skyrim all tricked out with HD texture mods.

I'm tired of hearing this unsubstantiated opinion stated as fact. As far I'm aware, this is nothing more than a tenacious myth. Go to nvidia's forums and you'll see plenty of people whining about plenty of problems with their drivers. Go to amd's forums and you'll see the same.

I have both AMD/ATI and Nvidia cards.... my ATI drivers are constantly having issues. on windows server 2008R2, 7 and 8. Skyrim is unplayable on my ATI card and Fallout NV is as well...

That's anecdotal evidence. If you really want to discuss that, I could mention I had problems with all nvidia video cards I've owned, and that the most unstable drivers I've ever seen were nvidia's under Vista in 2007. But that'd be just as irrelevant.